A game of cat and Mouse Keys on the Mac

A pressing issue among many Mac users is, “How do I keep my cat from enabling settings when they bat at or sleep on the keyboard?”

One reader in particular discovered his kitty keeps pressing the Option key when he’s not keeping her off it. If you have a certain Accessibility feature enabled, pressing the Option key five times in a row lets you use several centrally located keys to move a cursor around in lieu of another input peripheral.

While the feature is turned on, you can’t type with those keys, a problem for this reader because the movement keys include a character in his password.

That feature? Mouse Keys. Yes, the cat is playing with Mouse Keys.

It’s an easy problem to solve, however. Open the Accessibility preference pane, click the Mouse & Trackpad item in the list, and then uncheck Enable Mouse Keys. To make it stick, click Options and uncheck the box Press the Option Key Five Times to Toggle Mouse Keys.

IDG

When the user’s away, the cat will play, but you can also opt to lock your screen  > Lock Screen when you leave your computer unattended.

This Mac 911 article is in response to a question submitted by Macworld reader Mark.

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